Our comparison of BMI values based on self-reports and physical measurements confirms several of the basic findings in the literature: While self-report and measured height and weight tend to be highly correlated, there remain deviations of the self-reported BMI values from measured BMI values, particularly at the high and low ends of the BMI scale, which are large enough to result in substantial misclassifications of either underweight or obese people (see Table 1). This is not surprising, given the social sensitivity generally associated with body images [10,11,14]. However, the consensus in the literature -- that the use of self-reported BMI measures leads to substantial underestimates of the population proportion who are overweight and obese -- needs some refinement. For instance, as we have shown, underestimates of the actual BMI based on self-reported height and weight are generally less severe among adults in the age range of 35 to 55, and the bias towards greater underreporting among women than men tends to disappear with older age. More importantly, it is possible to adjust self-reported BMI scores, based on a few, easily
